Point Twelve

EFFECTIVE SET OF MIND

The MENTALITY represents man's varying realizations of the personal equilibrium between his inner life and his outer world. By means of his mental reactions and thinking processes he brings his experience to knowable and verifiable focus, and his ability to do this is shown in the horoscope primarily by the position and relations of Mercury. The supernumerary member of the DEPARTMENT of EFFICIENCY identifies first of all the self's everyday approach through its rational capacity to the ultimate objectivity of life in general. This approach is revealed as eager when the PLANET is in its zodiacal position clockwise from the sun, and as certain when it is on the counterclockwise side. The rate at which the moon is moving in its characteristic rhythm in the zodiac at the moment of birth is indicative correspondingly of the perceptive ability or reactive capacity of the personal consciousness. If the motion of the LESSER LIGHT is greater than its mean of 13°10' during the twenty-four-hour period in which the NATIVE is born, it is said to be fast and to give testimony to an alert perception. In the contrary case, when the movement is slow, the conscious response to external realities is identified as deliberate. The interrelation of these two considerations produces the primary INDICATION of the mind's effective set, or of what in astrology often is known as the MENTAL CHEMISTRY of the chart. [383] When the reasoning process tends to eagerness and the attention leans to deliberation, or when the former inclines to certainty and the latter to alertness, the combination is a healthy balance and the desirable norm. In such an instance there is seldom any necessity for special analysis or advisement. It is the situation in the horoscope of Prince Charles.

When the effective set of MIND in the terms of the MENTAL CHEMISTRY shows the combination of rational eagerness and perceptive alertness the life usually is characterized by an altogether unnecessary impatience. The NATIVE is inclined to stumble over his own toes most of the time, and he is apt to end up with actions and associations that not only fail to fulfill their promise but often handicap him very seriously by exhausting every potentiality of his make-up. An example is found in the horoscope of Adolf Hitler, the self-satisfied dictator who climbed high and swiftly to the pinnacle of his power only to plummet to utter defeat and opprobrium. Yet it is possible to capitalize on this lean to the Mercurial-lunar credulity or intellectual insouciance by a concentration of effort on matters that are best approached with a special lightness or swiftness of touch. The great foe of conventionality, H. L. Mencken, provides an excellent demonstration of the technique. At the other extreme in these combinations, or when the reason demands a continual certainty and the perceptivity tends to be deliberate, the individual is apt to withdraw within himself to an extent that hardly is to his interest and perhaps indeed to slip off into altogether abnormal practices and points of view. The chart of Eugene O'Neill is an illustration, and [384] it should be noted that his success was due in very great part to the insights actually gained from his personal frustrations and intellectual deviation. Another case is provided by the NATIVITY of Helena Blavatsky, whose remarkably comprehensive presentation and exposition of the age-old arcane tradition was possible only through her totally unsocialized inwardness of self-realization.

An INDICATION of the effective set of MIND that often is of equal importance with the mental chemistry is provided by the special relationships of Mercury with the positive and negative PLANETS of its LINE OF EFFICIENCY through major ASPECTS.

MERCURY NOT IN MAJOR ASPECT WITH MARS OR VENUS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by little inclination for orientation to the everyday practicalities immediately at hand, and that the NATIVE in consequence may dissipate his superficial interests in one or another blind alley. His insight may have exceptional freedom in his approach to more important matters however, through the very lack of any great rapport with petty considerations or bondage to them, and what in some respects is a deficiency in others then becomes a very real asset. This is the INDICATION in the horoscope of Prince Charles, and hence there is testimony again to his anchorage in a much greater frame of life than provided on the superficial levels alone.

MERCURY IN A CONJUNCTION ASPECT WITH MARS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by a heightened INITIATIVE, and that there is a consequent danger of too positive an assertion of ideas or of unnecessary alienation of associates and people generally. The NATIVE needs a [385] genuine challenge to his intellectual potentials if he is not to lose himself in the maze of his own notions. An example is provided by the chart of Friedrich Nietzsche, who in his uncompromising idealism of human potentialities came to have little commerce with the masses to whom he might have brought a real light of understanding and in his contempt for Christianity and Christian institutions so isolated himself that his reason gave way.

MERCURY IN CONJUNCTION ASPECT WITH VENUS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by a heightened APPRECIATION, and faces the consequent danger of too-positive opinions on too many subjects as well as too little willingness to give credit to the intelligence of others. The NATIVE needs every opportunity to demonstrate his own excellencies in order to win or hold the respect of his fellows. An illustration is presented by Frédéric Chopin, as especially dramatized through the final two decades of his life in Paris.

MERCURY IN A SEXTILE ASPECT WITH MARS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by exceptional ease in its operation, and that the MIND is apt to be tireless in pursuing the lines of its own special interest. The NATIVE always is able to take the way of least resistance in working out problems, and in coming to agreement with the others around him. An example is supplied by the natal figure of George Washington Carver, who reduced the task of creating economic potentials out of thin air to an almost absurd simplicity.

MERCURY IN A SEXTILE ASPECT WITH VENUS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by an exceptional facility on the part of MIND for working in rapport with other [386] minds, and for obtaining a full recognition for its own insights in passing. The NATIVE may be inclined to accept ready-made conclusions or to follow conventional modes of thought, but he needs little encouragement in adopting the many broader interests he might never cultivate by himself. President Dwight Eisenhower provides an illustration through his long demonstration of his powers as the skilled conciliator and administrator.

MERCURY IN A SQUARE ASPECT WITH MARS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by a distinctly intellectual ambition, and at times the MIND may reveal an almost insatiable desire for perfecting its own potentialities down to the last and least detail. The NATIVE usually delights in taking issue with established ideas, and often he upsets everybody around him through his insistence on the perfection of man's reasoning powers. An example is found in the chart of George Bernard Shaw, who never was as happy as when he could bring some pet notion of his fellows to the bar of reason.

MERCURY IN A TRINE ASPECT WITH MARS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by an exceptional breadth of outreach, and so usually by a willingness to explore every possible ramification of any given idea. The NATIVE is never troubled with the slightest doubts of his competence to deal with any issue, and at times he is much too fond of the vagaries of his own speculation. An illustration is presented by the NATIVITY of Franklin Roosevelt, who with his intimates of the spirit took the country around the corner at a time of great crisis but certainly traveled many a devious and fruitless path in giving effective form to the new orientation. [387]

MERCURY IN OPPOSITION ASPECT WITH MARS indicates that the mental capacity is marked by a creative consistency, and often also by a gift of genuinely prophetic insight. The NATIVE is apt to be impatient with the slow comprehension of his fellows, and at times he cannot bring his talents into leash sufficiently to be a stimulus rather than an irritation to his contemporaries. An example is supplied by Thomas Mann, one of the great novelists of the century and a Nobel-prize winner but yet characterized by a condescending attitude and a failure to achieve any real rapport with the general reader.

In the instances where Mercury forms a major ASPECT to Mars and also to Venus, both INDICATIONS are taken into account and separately. Thus its SEXTILE with Venus is found also in the chart of Thomas Mann and it is obvious that his intellectual impatience and depth of psychological realization in creating his major works has in no way led him to conceal the extreme collaboration of the spirit he developed with the German romanticists who have influenced him so strongly, or with the practical use he has made of the Freudian insights and the imaginative scope of Richard Wagner's ideas. The aesthetic conventionality of the substance of human realizations on which he has drawn in this fashion has helped him win his recognition without weakening or distorting the prophetic content of his work in any way.

The particular importance of Mercury in the over-all pattern of Prince Charles is its SEPTILE ASPECT with Jupiter and its contribution of the inescapable sense of the rightness and justification characterizing every turn his experience may take. FATALITY as DELINEATED [388] astrologically is essentially a subconscious determination to recreate some prior chapter of human effort, such as is preserved enduringly in the capacity and intelligence of the race itself, and to make this the basis of a further realization or fulfillment of the individuality. It is a tendency to sink the roots of self deep in the past for the sake of a present effectiveness. Where the potentiality does not culminate in any actual achievement, to add to the particular strand of man's maturation that has been built into general human consciousness and especially sharpened in the given individual, there may be an intensified and subtle frustration very likely to blight the life and even precipitate tragedy. In the prince's NATIVITY the MIND or rational capacity is the channel for the funneling of this stream of race background through his personality self-projection indicated by Jupiter, and it is helpful in his case that his reasoning is set apart in the manner shown by Mercury's lack of ASPECTS with Mars and Venus. Mercury's CONJUNCTION with the sun has no particular significance since, as pointed out, the ASPECT is found in fully half of all charts. The PLANET'S OPPOSITION with the moon has been seen to instrument the HIGH-FOCUS activity of the LESSER LIGHT through any necessary service of intellection in general and of imagination in particular, and its SEXTILE with Saturn has been found to be a similar instrumentation of the developing wisdom by shaping it for the basic cradling of the life. Its SQUARE with Pluto reveals the extent to which all insights are thrown ultimately to the execution of the life destiny through the TRIGGER'S whiplash.

For a practical or everyday understanding of the [389] effective set of MIND of Prince Charles it may be noted that his Mercury lies in the HOUSE of HOME, the SIGN of CREATIVITY and a degree symbolized by deep-sea divers. In the reduction of this horoscopic formula to a statement that is both accurate insight and simple explanation, in the framework of the over-all perspective, the astrologer may observe that (1) in CIRCUMSTANCES the basis of all initial reference in general reflection or in any definite formation of judgment is the cradling given this life through the situation from birth as heir to the throne, (2) in FUNCTION all rational effort tends to establish the validity of this source of conscious realization through a wholly personal and continually self-created experience, and (3) in every passing or recurrent convergence of reality in a given moment the NATIVE seeks to find the significance deep enough to reveal its grounding in the ever-realized womb of private reassurance or foundation in human achievement of perhaps many a channeling through past history. What is shown here may be summarized by saying that this young man will never compromise his own intuitive sense of things.

The NINTH HOUSE as ruler of UNDERSTANDING, as well as all concern at a distance or stressed remoteness of relationship, should always be considered in connection with any analysis of the mentality. In the prince's horoscope the HOUSE contains no PLANETS, and therefore and as might be anticipated the problems of the rational ordering of experience are never of immediate issue. The LORD of the NINTH is in the FIFTH, and in consequence the chart shows the everyday employment of the reasoning capacities to be primarily an effort to serve the self-expression. [390] Because of this the NATIVE is not likely to roam very far afield or drift about purposelessly in his intellectual speculations, and indeed it would be impossible with the depth of his roots within himself. The CUSP of the NINTH lies in the SIGN of SYMPATHY and a degree symbolized by a lady in fox fur. This indicates that he will be inclined to rest content with the furniture of realization that comes ready-made with his heritage, and even to luxuriate in the climate of opinion that prevails in the basic privacy of his consciousness. In everyday contacts he is apt to have but a tolerant patience with theory, and rather to be concerned almost entirely with life as it must be faced practically or in view of actual conditions. And in this he will tend to regard it in the most favorable of possible lights. Thus again he is seen as one who must epitomize values in himself rather than seeking to reform them in others or for others. Intellectually his instinct always is to see the best, and to like it and go on from there. In consequence a simple statement and clear insight can be to the effect that, no matter what else, he counts his blessings.

If and as often is done in the astrological tradition the THIRD HOUSE is taken as in balance with the NINTH, to describe a lower as against a higher form of mental process, what has now been brought out by way of unwavering optimism as the matrix for any deeper realization is in logical balance with the testimony of the THIRD to the exemption of the prince from practically all superficial strains except as he may find these of some specific usefulness.

<< Previous | Table of Contents | Continue >>